Comments on: Squidoo Goes Public Beta

By: blogging.wurk.net » Blog Archive » I am Squidoo’s newest Lensmaster.

Fri, 14 Apr 2006 23:28:42 +0000

[...] What the hell that means, I have no idea. I followed the link in Darren’s post about Squidoo coming out of private beta, and I had a spare 5 minutes so I thought I’d go see what it was all about. I kinda wish I hadn’t. [...]

By: Bobbi C.

Bobbi C. — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 16:30:19 +0000

After seeing a few lenses set up by friends, I decided to do my own. What a hoot! I love the way it works, instant links, etc. It’s not clear to me, however, how this will help my business, or if it’s even intended for that. I also wonder how the SEs will treat these. I do see great potential for it as a way of networking, or branding yourself as an expert.

http://www.squidoo.com/young-adult-literature/

Bobbi C.

By: Squidoo » The Cartoon Blog by Dave Walker

Squidoo » The Cartoon Blog by Dave Walker — Mon, 12 Dec 2005 14:34:35 +0000

[...] Commenters at Darren Rouse’s Problogger site have been trying it out too. [...]

By: John Dilbeck

John Dilbeck — Sun, 11 Dec 2005 14:23:11 +0000

I just learned about Squidoo yesterday and built a few lenses.

I think the site has potential because it makes it easy for most people to pick a topic and bring several resources into a single page without having to be a webmaster or HTML expert.

Having gone through a month of problems with Blogger and spending a week moving all of the blogs I hosted there (well, all but two, still working on it) to their own domains or archival dead-ends, I’m not much of a fan of free services right now.

That said, I created several lenses, including:

http://www.squidoo.com/GeorgiaDragRacing/
http://www.squidoo.com/CherokeeCountyNC/

I’ll play around with it some to see how it goes. So far, it looks good for non-expert website builders, and that’s a huge market.

All the best,

By: Erno

Erno — Sat, 10 Dec 2005 18:08:37 +0000

Following Seth’s blog closely I was very happy to be invited as a beta tester. For some weeks I have a few lenses up and running:
http://www.squidoo.com/domotics
http://www.squidoo.com/multiroom
http://www.squidoo.com/hometheatre
http://www.squidoo.com/hearing
http://www.squidoo.com/ernohannink

These are in the same knowledge area as my weblogs. I feel they do require less attention than a weblog. Not sure what it will become like. More a feeling for me like “build it and they will come…”

By: Enrique

Enrique — Sat, 10 Dec 2005 03:59:19 +0000

I was invited as a pre public beta user. Although the concept of mini guides is not new, it is very interesting the way it is marketed. Also there are lots of web personalities behind this project and that will be the key of success. BTW, my lens is about: Programming a Photoshop Plugin

By: Martin Ralya

Martin Ralya — Fri, 09 Dec 2005 18:25:07 +0000

“Freelane” = Freelance. Whoops. ;)

Any chance of a comments preview function, Darren?

By: Martin Ralya

Martin Ralya — Fri, 09 Dec 2005 18:24:16 +0000

I've put together three Squidoo lenses so far: - Martin Ralya, Freelane Writer (me) - Treasure Tables, a Weblog for GMs (my blog) - Game Mastering (my blog's topic, and one of my passions)

By: Stuart Robertson

Stuart Robertson — Fri, 09 Dec 2005 17:05:36 +0000

I’m setting up a few lenses including:

http://www.squidoo.com/boardgames/ and http://www.squidoo.com/webcomics/

The RSS and Technorati integration has some promise — but it would be nice to easily aggregate multiple RSS feeds into a single feed and display it…

By: Terry

Terry — Fri, 09 Dec 2005 15:49:06 +0000

btw Peter I added your podcasting lens to my favorites – I’m expecting an ipod under the Christmas tree this year so it will come in handy I’m sure lol.

By: Terry

Terry — Fri, 09 Dec 2005 15:20:25 +0000

I've been a beta tester too with one of my lenses ranking at number 1 so far (http://www.squidoo.com/Get_Paid). Not sure how that happened lol. I have a few more like http://www.squidoo.com/Affiliate_Goodies/ that I'd like to work on. I think for me the purpose or benefit of something like squidoo is to provide and review a highly targeted lens with good resources. Not sure I 'get' the full promise of squidoo though. It's been interesting and the squidoo team did a good job ironing out the bugs.

By: Peter

Peter — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 21:56:52 +0000

Here is one that I just started:

http://www.squidoo.com/thepodcast/

By: Chris @ Random Chaos

Chris @ Random Chaos — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 20:23:19 +0000

I created a lens about Karrine Steffans, the author of “Confessions of a Video Vixen.” I still need to add more content, but I have it linked to my blog and Karrine’s website right now.

She has another two books in the works and a movie deal coming out, so I’m hoping I’m getting this started on the ground floor.

http://www.squidoo.com/karrine_steffans_news/

By: Eric Giguere

Eric Giguere — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 18:57:01 +0000

Squidoo is all about creating external-facing portals, with revenue sharing as an incentive for maintaining it. At the very least, go and claim your vanity lens and aggregate all your stuff together for others to find, as in About that Eric Giguere person. Doesn't take long to get a basic lens with RSS feeds from your blogs and links to your sites up and running.

By: Stuart Robertson

Stuart Robertson — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 18:11:57 +0000

They’ve got a nice interface and good tools for integrating with services from other places on the web. I’m glad I stopped by today and saw this entry!

Time to get to work.

By: Anthony Tripodi

Anthony Tripodi — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 16:36:47 +0000

Squidoo is a great idea. It would be valuable to have a place to research stuff without being bombarded by advertisements and people selling that same stuff.

Seth Godin says that people want do some research and feel comfortable with their decision to buy something before they go shopping for it. When you look at Google search results for anything, the top sites are usually selling something. You have to dig through the results to find the information you need to make that informed decision.

The good lens will (hopefully) point to wikis, message boards, blogs, etc that provide the information that people want. Then they need to point to places to make purchases too so that there’s some profit to keep this going.

It’s an interesting idea and I hope it catches on.

Here’s mine:
http://www.squidoo.com/fondue/

By: Kim Dushinski

Kim Dushinski — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 13:13:32 +0000

I was a beta tester too and now have two lenses published. Honestly, I’m not satisfied with either of them being good enough YET, but you’re free to take a peek:

http://www.squidoo.com/christmasgifts
http://www.squidoo.com/scrapbookingstuff/

I jumped on board for one reason – Seth Godin. It seems to me that he is likely to do what it takes to make this work and he has that magical quality where projects he touches turn to gold.

There are quite a few things in Squidoo that don’t seem functional yet, but I am confident they will be worked out. I guess we’ll see how successful it will be or not. I’ve got my fingers crossed.

By: zamri79

zamri79 — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 09:41:38 +0000

http://www.squidoo.com/lensaku/

this my squiddo name as Lensaku (or english call My lens). Appreciate if you can come to this squiddo or maybe you can come to my blog to give some comment on how to get more traffic on it. Thanks

By: Mike Stopforth

Mike Stopforth — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 09:36:17 +0000

I’m not so sure. Squidoo is cumbersome. I’m not sure it does enough to differentiate itself from the rest of the crowd. My reasoning? The Mike Stopforth attention span test. I was able to spend about 40 min on it before dying of boredom, and I hadn’t really achieved much.

But I think you’re right – it will improve, and it will have to reach critical mass before it gets buy-in. Seth Godin can’t be too far wrong :)

By: Marco Raaphorst

Marco Raaphorst — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 09:29:50 +0000

forgot to mention: this will become a HUGE success. No doubt.